


Indoctrination

by salamanderinspace



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Daily Writing Exercise, M/M, POV Second Person, Stormpilot, Why Finn "broke" his conditioning, indoctrination
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-23
Updated: 2016-01-23
Packaged: 2018-05-15 17:56:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5794228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salamanderinspace/pseuds/salamanderinspace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You're in a village on Jakku at nightfall.  You have found something new to believe in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Indoctrination

You're in a village on Jakku at nightfall.

You're in a village on Jakku, and there is a sound like the _thwack_ of armor when it falls to the floor on the training deck.

You're in a village on Jakku and there is a sound like a _crack, crack cracking._ The air is cracking open, snapping apart, splintering with bullets. 

It's your first combat mission. This planet is small and dry, the atmosphere thin. The sand absorbs and kills reverb. You know the sound of gunfire but it has never sounded so wooden.

 _Crack crack crack._ Terse and dry. You never thought you'd think of the air aboard the Finalizer as moist. Maybe the little transports where you packed, toe to toe, into a carton of your brothers, and headed through space down to Jakku, maybe those were a little humid. They smelled like human bodies. Now, there is a smell like burning. Breathing is like waking from a dream.

You're waking, you're looking around, and you see Slip, right in front of you. He gives a little nod and turns to aim his blaster at a native. He's removed his gloves, and you can't help but notice how dry the skin on his hands are. Then - crack crack crack - blood is moistening his fingertips, and he grasps for you. You saw everything. You saw it all in a dream once.

You dreamt, once, that a Captain barked a challenge at twenty young cadets, twenty children. The soldier to shoot best and straightest would get extra portions at dinner. You watched the young Captain, all polished in Silver, dumping the portions on a durasteel slab behind a row of target-droids. In your dream, 19 children emptied their weapons savagely and repeatedly into effigies, competing for the prize. In your dream, a girl - lucky number 20 - gunned down the Captain, stormed the table, seized the portions, passed them around.

They gave her a medal for that. Later, they made her a Captain. The message was clear. He who is mighty is King.

You dream how they made you mighty. You dream about the drills and the marches, the hours of regimented and routine training. You remember how you excelled, how the whole squad simmered with jealousy, how you were good at things. How _you were good._ Because that's the difference between good and evil, isn't it? Goodness is strength. Goodness is survival. 

Now you watch Slip slip away.

You look up and you see the man who shot him. He is a _man_ , not a machine, and his rifle is aimed and righteous. Even you, a certified Stormtrooper, programmed _from birth_ for death, couldn't have made that shot. No one could - but he did, this man! This mighty person.

Maybe you're not as good as you thought you were. Maybe this man is better. 

The Order takes him prisoner. You watch as he endures torture. He doesn't break. It takes a priest - the Highest of your Order - to reach into his mind and break him. This man, this pilot, his will is beyond mortal and his skills are beyond mortal. He's spent his days in the sky. He has descended with great knowledge and no fear. 

That's when you decide to rethink Good and Evil. That's when you start to wonder _who,_ truly, is King.

"I can fly anything," he says, and it's true. He flies and you flee and the whole Finalizer can't bring him down. When you crash like flames from heaven into Jakku, you are thrown from the craft and from consciousness. You wake and he's gone. You take the shroud he wore; you wrap it around your body.

Three days later, you see Poe Dameron again. His X-wing cuts curved shapes through the sky like the arches of a temple you saw, once, in a holovid. He is speeding impossibly and pointing towards infinite. He has risen from the dead. For the first time you realize that you too rose from the dead. When you took a new name. When you buried your number. When you stepped, impossibly alive, out of the sand on Jakku, and drank unclean water, and chose to help a girl climb into space...

Because you get to choose, now. You made a _choice._ Now all you must do is stay faithful, and it's easy, because you're in charge. You're in charge, now. You're a Captain in a sea of miracles; you're a King born to cut down the darkness.


End file.
